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A buddy read with Kristen, Gavin, and Kaora. Please let me know if I missed somebody.

For those unfamiliar with Forgotten Realms and the whole Dungeons and Dragons thingy I have just one question: what rock have you been living under? Anyway welcome to Menzoberranzan (I will award my very special bonus points to anybody who was able to pronounce the city's name correctly on the first try). The underground city is the home of dark elves who call themselves drow. They are not nice by any stretch of imagination and make Darth Vader look like a kindergarten bully wannabe. To put it simply, drows who are less evil than Sauron, Shai'tan, and Wicked Witch of the East rolled in one simply do not survive for long.

An unusual child is born in one of the families; I am using word "family" in very loose sense here. He was supposed to be sacrificed to the local deity The Spider Queen, but was saved from this by some very fortunate - or unfortunate depending on point of view - timing. His name is Drizzt and he will grow up to become a legend:

This book is about his youth and constant struggles for survival. This was actually the main point of attraction of the novel for me. I was very curious to see what happened to Drizzt to make him grow up a normal human (sorry elf) being. He did not become Mary Sue - not yet at least, but compared to the rest of the drows he is Mary Sue.

The (under)world is great. I am not sure how much of it came from the author and how much from already existing standard Forgotten Realms settings, so I will not attribute all of it to Salvatore's creative writing. Let me just say that if you are looking for a completely bleak and hopeless world, look no further.

Other than the world itself I found the intrigues and constant backstabbing of the drow society fascinating.

Usually in any literature the best written characters are the ones written in different shades of gray (sorry no pun intended). In this book the vast majority of the characters are written in different shades of black with an exception of Drizzt and possibly his mentor Zak. I would not call them very well developed - again with the exception of Drizzt himself, but there were some interesting two-dimensional ones who actually serve their purpose in the story nicely.

I began reading this story not expecting to find an example of high literature but hoping to be entertained. This is exactly what I got in the end. I look forward to read the next book as this one while not ending in a cliffhanger still leaves things in fairly unsettled state and I am curious to see the further development. My rating is 3.5 stars rounded down.

Read information about the author

As one of the fantasy genre’s most successful authors, R.A. Salvatore enjoys an ever-expanding and tremendously loyal following. His books regularly appear on The New York Times best-seller lists and have sold more than 10,000,000 copies. Salvatore’s original hardcover, The Two Swords, Book III of The Hunter’s Blade Trilogy (October 2004) debuted at # 1 on The Wall Street Journal best-seller list and at # 4 on The New York Times best-seller list. His books have been translated into numerous foreign languages including German, Italian, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Turkish, Croatian, Bulgarian, Yiddish, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Portuguese, Czech, and French.

Salvatore’s first published novel, The Crystal Shard from TSR in 1988, became the first volume of the acclaimed Icewind Dale Trilogy and introduced an enormously popular character, the dark elf Drizzt Do’Urden. Since that time, Salvatore has published numerous novels for each of his signature multi-volume series including The Dark Elf Trilogy, Paths of Darkness, The Hunter’s Blades Trilogy, and The Cleric Quintet.

His love affair with fantasy, and with literature in general, began during his sophomore year of college when he was given a copy of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings as a Christmas gift. He promptly changed his major from computerscience to journalism. He received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Communications from Fitchburg State College in 1981, then returned for the degree he always cherished, the Bachelor of Arts in English. He began writing seriously in 1982, penning the manuscript that would become Echoes of the Fourth Magic. Salvatore held many jobs during those first years as a writer, finally settling in (much to our delight) to write full time in 1990.

The R.A. Salvatore Collection has been established at his alma mater, Fitchburg State College in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, containing the writer’s letters, manuscripts, and other professional papers. He is in good company, as The Salvatore Collection is situated alongside The Robert Cormier Library, which celebrates the writing career of the co-alum and esteemed author of young adult books.

Salvatore is an active member of his community and is on the board of trustees at the local library in Leominster, Massachusetts. He has participated in several American Library Association regional conferences, giving talks on themes including “Adventure fantasy” and “Why young adults read fantasy.” Salvatore himself enjoys a broad range of literary writers including James Joyce, Mark Twain, Geoffrey Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dante, and Sartre. He counts among his favorite genre literary influences Ian Fleming, Arthur Conan Doyle, Fritz Leiber, and of course, J.R.R. Tolkien.

Born in 1959, Salvatore is a native of Massachusetts and resides there with his wife Diane, and their three children, Bryan, Geno, and Caitlin. The family pets include three Japanese Chins, Oliver, Artemis and Ivan, and four cats including Guenhwyvar.

When he isn't writing, Salvatore chases after his three Japanese Chins, takes long walks, hits the gym, and coaches/plays on a fun-league softball team that includes most of his family. His gaming group still meets on Sundays to play.